9 hours ago
'We don't want to be the worst in the world!': Labour's feeble energy costs ambition to cut bills as Business Secretary says he hopes it will make Britain 'not the least competitive'
A scheme to cut energy costs will mean the UK is not the worst in the world, the Business Secretary said on Monday.
In an astonishing admission of the limits of the Government's ambitions, Jonathan Reynolds said he hoped it would make Britain 'not the least competitive'.
He said that while the UK could not hope to compete with low prices in the US, it could move to 'the middle of the pack'.
Energy-intensive businesses have warned they face 'crippling' costs, putting them at a disadvantage to competitors in the US and Europe where costs are far lower. Ministers have pledged to slash electricity costs for thousands of businesses to help them compete with foreign rivals.
They hope bills can be cut by 25 per cent for some companies as part of the Government's industrial strategy which it announced on Monday.
Asked if he was striving for parity with Europe in terms of prices, Mr Reynolds told reporters that the UK would not be able to compete with the US.
But he added: 'What I can do, what we can do here, is not be the least competitive. So I want to not be the least competitive.' He said that the UK energy prices had spiralled above those in other countries in recent years.
'We're going to move to a position where we are not the least competitive, [where] we are equivalent to other economies that we would be competing against for inward investment decisions,' he said.
He added: 'It moves us from being an outlier right into the middle of the pack, cheaper than Italy, Czech Republic, and broadly comparable to, say, Germany.' The British Industrial Competitiveness Scheme aims to cut costs by up to £40 per megawatt hour for over 7,000 manufacturing firms from 2027.
It will do this by exempting them from green levies on bills including the renewables obligation, feed-in tariffs and the capacity market. The scheme will also cut network charges for around 500 of the most energy-intensive firms, including the steel industry, chemicals and glassmaking.
Acting shadow energy secretary Andrew Bowie said: 'It's astonishing that Labour are finally admitting that the costs of Net Zero are so high that they're having to spend billions of pounds of taxpayers' money subsidising businesses' energy bills to stop them going bust.'
Sir Keir Starmer also hailed a £40 billion investment by Amazon over three years which he said would create thousands of jobs.
